With all the thoughts trying to bring people back into the regular RP board, I had a few thoughts that I thought I would toss out there and see if any stick. So feel free to comment/whatever, but keep in mind these are very rough sort of "springboard" ideas and not entirely concrete.
--I remember when we did a lot more random new pet toss ups, when you had to post 'taking one!' and that was that. What if that idea was morphed into something like a swarm or a hunt? They would appear in a certain area of the forums for a certain amount of time, and x amount of posts would have to be made in order to obtain one. It might stand to make these pets a little rarer and more sought after and it would help draw people into the other areas of the forums. Want to help spark some RP friendships or possibly character plots? Maybe release two new colors at once and have the second one only be obtainable to those who choose to work in teams hunting/questing together for x amount of posts.
All event-meant threads would have to have some special marking (maybe a "***" at the beginning or something) to mark them as such to be properly counted.
--"But Kal, the mods are stretched too thin to read and count posts."
They are, I know. But what if, for each event, certain trustworthy members were appointed (those interested could sign up and the staff could select them from there?) as "Record Keepers" or something. For that week (or two or whatever the time length happened to be) they would be in charge of counting everyone's posts and keeping track of who was going it alone and who was working in groups. There could be either a designated mod to PPM or somewhere that they could post when a user had reached their post count and could be awarded the pet. At the end of the event, all names listed could be mass PM'ed the new pet codes they had earned.
This would get everyone working for a non-breedable, rejuvenate the board(s) it spanned over, and maybe even create some plots that would get at least a few players to stay and keep RPing there. Ks would be earned, but it would require activity towards something other than breeding.
--Along those same lines, maybe there could be species specific events. Maybe there's a Matches migration going on, or a great gathering of Slynx for a ceremonial hunt. These could be part of or in place of the new pet releases and encourage users in much the same way to utilize their non-breedable pets for a little character development and gain a new, special non-breedable for it.
--Revitalize the user-hosted event thread. That board had such potential, and I think that if it was explained a little better or had an example linked it would do much better.
There you go, my little two cents that I don't know will be successful...just tossing out some ideas in hopes they might turn into building block of some sort.